Category Archives: Short Stories

Post navigation

These titles – from established, new, and emerging authors – are some of the most anticipated new releases of the month, based on advance reviews and book world enthusiasm.

Click here to see all of these titles in the Everett Public Library catalog, where you can read reviews or summaries and place holds. Or click on a book cover below to enlarge it, or to view the covers as a slide show.

This month’s all-stars (unanimous starred reviews in Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly) go to Elizabeth McCracken’s Bowlaway, an inter-generational tale centered around a family-run bowling alley; first novelist Lauren Wilkinson’s literary thriller American Spy; Charlie Jane Anders SF novel The City in the Middle of the Night, and The Ruin of Kings, an epic fantasy by Jenn Lyons.

Also this February, Booker-prize-winner Marlon James ventures into fantasy in his Black Leopard, Red Wolf, much-honored Yiyun Li looks at a mother dealing with her young son’s suicide in Where Reasons End, and Valeria Luiselli creatively chronicles a struggling marriage and immigration issues in her Lost Children Archive. These are just a few of the titles you have to look forward to this month.

Click here to see all of the titles below in the Everett Public Library catalog, where you can read reviews or summaries and place holds. Or click on a book cover below to enlarge it, or to view the covers as a slide show. And remember, each month, beneath these thumbnail book covers are links to all our on-order fiction, to the cumulative notable new fiction featured here as the year progresses, and a new link for 2019 Debuts – featuring 2019’s notable new novelists and short story writers, which will also grow as new authors publish their first books. Read on!

These titles – from established, new, and emerging authors – are some of the most anticipated new releases of the month, based on advance reviews and book world enthusiasm.

Click here to see all of these titles in the Everett Public Library catalog, where you can read reviews or summaries and place holds. Or click on a book cover below to enlarge it, or to view the covers as a slide show.

As always, you can click the link for Notable New Fiction 2018 (to date) below, which now includes all the Spot-Lit titles for the year, and here’s a link to our separate Best Books of the Year post. Happy reading!

These titles – from established, new, and emerging authors – are some of the most anticipated new releases of the month, based on advance reviews and book world enthusiasm.

Click here to see all of these titles in the Everett Public Library catalog, where you can read reviews or summaries and place holds. Or click on a book cover below to enlarge it, or to view the covers as a slide show.

The reading challenger for October is an intriguing one: read a book with a one-word title. There are so many choices. You could go classic (1984, Emma, Nostromo), popular (Outlander, Allegiant, Twilight), by color (Blue, Green, Grey) or throw caution to the wind and just plug in a word in the catalog and see what comes up. For my selection, I went with a book that has been generating some positive reviews lately: Florida by Lauren Groff. Luckily, I was not disappointed by my choice. Read on to find out why.

While the short stories in this collection aren’t connected plot wise, there is one place at the center of all of them: a fevered, humid, beautiful and dangerous imagining of the Sunshine State. Even in the few stories that aren’t actually set there, Florida is always in the mix, lurking in the background. In addition to setting, many of the characters in these stories are dealing with an unfocused anger produced by living in a world they see as being on the verge of collapse and not being able to do a thing about it.

But it is Groff’s ability to set a scene and her use of language that really steals the show. Take this quote from the story ‘Ghosts and Empties’:

The neighborhood goes dark as I walk, and a second neighborhood unrolls atop the daytime one. We have few streetlights, and those I pass under make my shadow frolic; it lags behind me, gallops to my feet, gambols on ahead. The only other illumination is from the windows in the houses I pass and the moon that orders me to look up, look up! Feral cats dart underfoot, bird-of-paradise flowers poke out of the shadows, smells are exhaled into the air: oak dust, slime mold, camphor.

Just as intriguing are the stories she tells. All are gems but here are four that you definitely shouldn’t miss:

‘Dogs go Wolf’ is the tale of two young girls apparently forgotten in a cabin on a small Florida island. Their efforts to survive are harrowing, but the real danger arrives when the adults come back.

‘Eyewall’ depicts a woman who stubbornly decides to ride out a hurricane alone. The conditions outside do not inspire fear in her but rather trigger thoughts of her past life that begin to blend with the present.

‘Above and Below’ chronicles a young woman who decides to quit college and survive free from any attachments. Without realizing it, she begins to fall farther and farther down the socio-economic ladder until deprivation feels normal.

‘At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners’ follows a young boy from his youth to middle age with a particular emphasis on the troubled relationship he has with his tyrannical herpetologist father. His attempts to distance himself just draw him further in.

While there are many single worded titles to choose from to fulfill the reading challenge for this month, why not give Florida a chance. If you do, you will be introduced to an intriguing cast of characters and a memorable setting. All without having to shell out for airfare or applying copious amounts of mosquito repellent.

Click here to see all of these titles in the Everett Public Library catalog, where you can read reviews or summaries and place holds. Or click on a book cover below to enlarge it, or to view the covers as a slide show.

These titles – from established, new, and emerging authors – are some of the most anticipated new releases of the month, based on advance reviews and book world enthusiasm.

Click here to see all of these titles in the Everett Public Library catalog, where you can read reviews or summaries and place holds. Or click on a book cover below to enlarge it, or to view the covers as a slide show.